City To Prosecute Minor Cases, Easing Circuit Court Burden

September 29, 1999|By Warren Moulds.

ST. CHARLES — Save time and make money is the formula St. Charles City Atty. Timothy O'Neil put forth recently to persuade aldermen to proceed in developing a municipal adjudication program for minor offenses.

Local governments, he told the city's Government Operations Committee, have the authority to prosecute local misdemeanors ranging from ordinance to traffic violations. The advantages, he said, include quicker turnaround of ordinance cases than can be achieved in Circuit Court.

"The judges in the Circuit Court, quite understandably, probably don't think a weed height ordinance violation is as serious as most of the other cases they hear," O'Neil said.

For the program to work, he suggested using the City Council chambers as a courtroom to hear 150 to 200 cases a week, developing a separate filing system and a hiring a hearing officer.

O'Neil has been prosecuting ordinance violations since March and said the city is shortchanging itself by sharing fines and costs with the Circuit Court, which in a 13-month period collected $529,725. In that period the city's cut was $192,956, or 27 percent of the total.

"Quite frankly," the attorney said, "the court docket is crowded, and judges don't seem to be as interested in these municipal matters as they are in criminal matters. We can relieve judges of this burden . . . for the benefit of the city."